Some Words of 'Rizdom' for The New Freshman Class

First things first, congratulations, Class of 2030! Getting into Amherst College is an incredible feat, and you should all be proud of yourselves! My freshman year was an exciting and magical time filled with personal and intellectual discovery. Meeting so many new people from different backgrounds at Amherst punctured my upper-middle-class conception of “normal.” Moreover, I not only had to adjust to Amherst’s rigorous academics but also struggled with peer pressure. By now, as a senior, I’ve done many things on this campus, from working with faculty to develop academic policies on the Committee on Educational Policy to cleaning out leftover nails in a drawer in Seelye House while working a janitorial job for Commencement. In this article,  I want to offer the incoming class a few pieces of anecdotal advice — or, words of “Rizdom” — on how to best use your time at Amherst. My advice will deal with specific aspects of how to maximize your emotional well-being, intellectual growth, and professional development. I hope you will both enjoy your time at Amherst and use as many of its resources as possible to aid your personal and intellectual self-discovery.

One: Get Off Fizz

Fizz, the social media app where anyone with an Amherst email can post anonymously without administrative moderation, is an inescapable part of Amherst today. However, using Fizz can easily be detrimental to your mental and emotional health. Though some content on Fizz is innocuous and occasionally funny, a substantial amount of its content intentionally demeans and humiliates people. I experienced this firsthand when I ran for Association of Amherst Students President last semester, where Fizz users accused me of manipulating the student body by talking about my disability in my candidate statement. Fizz allows personal attacks towards anyone on campus without any recourse: The app’s moderation policies are woefully inadequate to deal with toxic content, as the removal of posts requires agreement across multiple student moderators. Even if you never end up posting, the negative effects of social media, such as bullying and misinformation, can quickly accumulate and lead to sleep problems, anxiety, depression, and relationship problems. Browsing Fizz, especially, can give you drastically unrealistic impressions of the Amherst community. Every time I have browsed Fizz, I have asked myself — are these posts really coming from the same people who attend school as me? 

Two: The Loeb Center is Your Friend

It is easy to think as a freshman that graduation and the job market are very far out — a whole four years in the future! You should not preoccupy all your headspace with fears about the job market or what you will do after Amherst. However, as a senior, I can attest that time will fly by quickly, and, therefore, that it is a good idea to start engaging early with the Loeb Center, Amherst’s dedicated center for career exploration and advising. I recommend this for several reasons. First, in my experience, everyone at the Loeb Center is eager to get to know and help students and can help you on whatever stage you are at with career exploration, whether you are still discovering what you are interested in professionally or are already dead set on a career pathway. Second, networking, resume-writing, and cover letter-writing are skills we develop with practice, so it's best to start early — long before the job search. This is so that when the time comes, you are well prepared and confident in your abilities to apply for internships, jobs, and graduate schools.

Freshmen can get involved with the Loeb Center in several ways. First, scheduling an appointment to say “hi” or popping by during drop-in hours at Frost Library is a great way to introduce yourself and start building a relationship with the advisors there. Personally, and perhaps second, I began to engage seriously with the Loeb Center through the Arts and Humanities in Action (AHA) program, a week-long program in January where we discussed the many career possibilities available to those with a humanities degree. That program — especially the free trip to Boston — was one of the highlights of my own freshman year, as it provided an invaluable opportunity to learn professional skills and meet with alumni.

Three: Explore Intellectually.

That said, throughout your time at Amherst, make sure a pre-professional mindset doesn't keep you from exploring intellectually outside your comfort zone, and spend time to explore what excites you before committing down a path. For me, intellectual exploration had life-changing consequences. In the fall of my sophomore year, I stumbled into the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Class “Justice.” Working with incarcerated students completely changed my worldview and professional goals — I became much more self-aware about the enormous privileges an Amherst education confers and was inspired to work in the criminal justice world. 

Intellectual exploration also helped me confirm my choice to be a history major. Though I came into Amherst reasonably confident that I wanted to be a history major, I also intentionally branched out and took classes across many different subjects — including religion, English, and math — to see what kind of thinking enticed me. Even though I ultimately ended up sticking with history, this exploratory process was valuable because it allowed me to both confirm my interest in the field and to come up with clearer, more substantial reasons for pursuing the major. 

Of course, exploring new areas often means encountering paths that don’t resonate with you — and that’s perfectly okay. Recognizing what doesn’t interest you is just as important as discovering what does. For instance, I learned that I did not want to take additional math classes after many frustrating office hours for “Introduction to the Calculus.” And the two semesters I spent taking “Beginning French I” and “Intermediate French” my sophomore year, unfortunately, led to much more frustration than François in my head. These dead ends for sure hurt your GPA; I know for a fact that mine could have been higher had I chosen other courses. However, genuine and fruitful intellectual exploration is bound to be frustrating because you will need to spend a fair amount of time in the trial-and-error process before finding your true passion. The power of intellectual exploration comes not necessarily from the end product of finding out what you’re interested in, but rather from the process itself. After all, given the open curriculum, you will most likely never have another opportunity to explore so many academic topics at such a low opportunity cost. 

Concluding Thoughts: Don’t Sweat It.

As a freshman, it is easy to feel like you need to have everything sorted out from day one and that everybody else has their act together already. This is not true. What I have learned, throughout my time at Amherst thus far, is that intellectual and personal growth does not stop after orientation; it does not stop after your first semester, nor does it stop after your first year. Rather, it will continue throughout your time at Amherst and beyond. I myself am still uncovering new interests — like the abolitionists — that I could not imagine when I first arrived at Amherst three years ago. That’s why my main piece of advice is not to sweat it. Don’t worry — freshman year is only the start.